Kimbabalu

All Things Trivial

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

I vow...

... that I will never hand out methamphetamines and vodka to my son's teenage friends. Even if it means that I am forever relegated to the "totally uncool" category of moms - the category that includes the ones who shriek "Don't forget to wash your hands after you go to the bathroom!" to their kids as they drop them off at school in front of the entire football team.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Man's Best Friend...and then some

Read this article and then join me in contemplating what a fucked up world we live in. I'm not sure what part of the article I enjoyed the most. Was it the fact that:

1) The dog's name was Lucky. Ah, sweet Irony - you are a harsh mistress!

2) So few states have laws against bestiality - yet they were all rushing to the polls to prevent gays from getting married!

3) Or is it this statement,

Yoder, who lives in a local apartment complex, last month asked a female acquaintance to join him in a sex act with the dog.... She demurred, but later told a friend about it. That person called a social worker, who called police.

Hmmm... Wouldn't you have loved to have overheard that conversation - or any of those conversations?

"Brittney, you'll never guess what my neighbor just asked!""What?""Well, like I was just carrying my groceries into my apartment when, like, the blind guy next door asks if I want to be in a threesome with him and his dog!""No way!""WAY!!!!"

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Random Thoughts and Musings...

...as I enter my 13th hour at work and attempt to blog as a way to alleviate the need to set my hair on fire and run screaming from the building.

1. To the lady in front of me at Starbucks this morning: I don't know when, or even if, hot pink, skin-tight capri pants were ever "in," but here's the thing: Please don't assault my eyes with your sausage-esque technicolor-wrapped physique at 7:00 in the morning. If you're a size 20 then wear a size 20 - don't try to butter your ass to squeeze into a size 10. It's cruel and unusual punishment for those of us waiting in line behind you who only wanted to get our morning caffeine fix.

2. To the asshole that tossed a GLASS bottle (from a Starbucks frappuccino - there's the evil influence of Starbucks again!) out of your car window as you pulled away from the intersection this morning: I wrote down a discription of your car and your license plate number. It is plastered to my dashboard so that if I ever see you again I will follow you to your destination and pelt your car (Dodge Minivan) with my son's soiled diapers. And if you think I'm not insane enough to follow through with this threat then you need to call some of my friends from college. If they're not too drunk they'll verify that I can and will follow through with said threat.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Letter to my son,

Let me apologize. You’re stuck with me and I am weird. This means that in the years to come as you struggle to seem “normal” to all your little friends in middle school and high school you are doomed to fail. As soon as they meet me – and, yes, I will insist on meeting all of your friends – they will realize just how demented I am. So I’m writing this to warn you ahead of time.

For starters, I have an inner monologue going on in my head ALL THE TIME. This means that random phrases and sentences make their way from my brain to my mouth at the most inopportune times. I’ve tried to convince my doctor that I have Turret’s Syndrome (damnit!) and should thus be excused from work. He (fuckface!) isn’t convinced (suck it!).

What does this mean to you? Well, it’s one of the reasons why your dad picks you up from daycare. It’s not that he loves you more than I do (I love you more!! Just remember who carried you for 9 months despite constant constipation and swollen ankles – me or him?), or that he’s any less weird. No, it means that he’s better at hiding his weirdness from other people. It means, for instance, that when he gets into a conversation with your daycare teacher about your fiery 2-year-old mood swings he doesn’t say stuff like,

“Yeah, he DOES react really strongly to changes in routine. It’s, like, he’s either on or off, either ‘you’ve just killed my family and raped my puppy,’ or ‘it’s all cool but any minute now I’m gonna get medieval on your ass!’”

I don’t know why your teacher just stood there with her mouth open and didn’t say anything back to me. It’s like she’d never heard that in the context of toddler behavior modification before…

Aside from this inner monologue there is also the fact that I cannot stop myself from giving you nicknames. It started out innocently enough with names like “Monkey Boy” and “Scooter.” Then came “Prince of Poop” and “Señor Juicy Pants.” There were also nicknames like “Pooter,” “Spud,” and “Nutter-Butter-Punkin-Flutterby.” Some of these names have had a long shelf life while others just match the particular mood of the moment. Regardless, they all share one thing: They will haunt you for the rest of your days. Just think ahead to prom night! When you bring your date home I’ll be ready with the old photo albums so I can launch into a detailed description of the night you earned the nickname Señor Juicy Pants.

Don’t worry, your father and I have been putting money away in a college fund for you. I’m sure you can dip into it to pay for the therapy you’re going to need.

Above all, I love you nutter-butter-punkin-pooter-spud! Don’t forget that when you turn 13 and start down the road of teenage loathing. Oh yeah, your dad loves you too (just not as much as me!).

Monday, July 11, 2005

This Post Sucks

...just wanted to say that at the outset so no one gets his / her hopes up.

I've been taking an "art" class this summer, and the reason I call it "art" all in quotes is because I'm not really sure what to make of it. I'm (supposedly) working on a creative project with very little in the way of guidance from my prof. Big mistake. The first night he gave us an assignment to "be creative!" This phrase sends shivers down the spine of anal-retentive Literature majors like myself. I read creative shit - I don't produce it!

Anyway, I decided to try my hand at photography because, well, I don't really know why other than the fact that I just got a cool new camera and this seemed like a good excuse to try it out. Plus, the bootleg -- uh, I mean examination -- copy of photoshop was just sitting at home getting dust on it so I thought I'd try that out, too.

(Just as a side note: photoshop is a real bitch. They should pay ME to use it. How fucking counter-intuitive can it be? I was this close to getting an aneurysm from trying to figure out what all the little tool icons were meant to be.)

So, for lack of anything better to post here is the latest photocrap masterpiece to entertain and delight all 6 of my internet stalkers:

Oh...and if you're with the Legal Department of Mattel, Inc. you can contact me here and I'll be sure to get back to you.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Sorrow

All my inane ramblings got put on hold today so I could curl up in a fetal position, emit a high-pitched keening sound and mindlessly click the Refresh button to see the latest death toll - all as I thought, "god, not again."

Sorry, I got nothin' but maudlin thoughts, so in the tradition of failed writers and high school hacks everywhere I will offer up someone else's words in place of my own:

Sorrow

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain, -- Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town; I sit in my chair. All my thoughts are slow and brown: Standing up or sitting down Little matters, or what gown Or what shoes I wear.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

It's a Quickie!

..."Erection Symbology 101*"

So the end of the Summer semester is fast approaching and that means it's bitching season. Yep, this is the time when students descend on my office like locusts, whining and bitching about their about-to-be-posted grades. Having been both a student and a teacher I think I'm qualified to offer a few pointers on how to complain about a grade...

1) Wear deodorant!

2) When I ask you if there were any extenuating circumstances that prevented you from turning in your work on time think VERY carefully before you launch into the story of how your family MADE you go on a week-long trip to the Bahamas with them.

3) Please don't pick your nose in my presence. I'm begging you. I have a two-year-old so I'm no stranger to boogers, I just don't want to be confronted with any more boogers than I already am.

and finally...

4) Even though a raging erection may impress some people in some other venues - Oaklawn after midnight comes to mind - it does not belong in my office. Please control your moderately-sized schlong so it doesn't intrude on our conversation like some overly-excitable miniature poodle constantly jumping up and down for attention.

*I have to give mad props to my friend H. for coming up with the name for this post. Please visit her new blog - and worship her for the blog-goddess that she is (or will soon be).

Friday, July 01, 2005

Macaroni Grill - why go anywhere else?

I mean really, where else can you have so much fun fucking around with the waitstaff? Except for Denny's -but screwing around with the poor waitress working the 11:00 to 7:00 am shift at Denny's is just beyond cruel - doesn't her life suck enough?

What I like about Mac Grill (and I think I've been there often enough that I can go all informal and just call it 'The MG' cuz, you know, we're tight like that. Word.) is that they hire pimply-faced, sub-moronic, junior-college drop-outs and then they try to teach them to write their names upside-down in crayon. How fucking cruel is that?

That's where my friend Jess and I come in. Our own lives have been transformed into snot-covered, germ-tastic suburban wastelands by our children so we feel justified in making other, less-fortunate, people feel even worse about their lives -- and there's nobody around who's less fortunate than the poor trainees at The MG.

A typical visit starts out innocently enough. We get shown to our table by the perky hostess who smells like an extreme fruit salad because she has apparently just plunged herself into a pungent mixture of every product that Bath & Body Works ever made. She informs us that Micah will be our waiter.

Micah is in training. He is wearing the "I'm a Trainee So Feel Free To Fuck With Me" button on his shirt and is followed by a bored-looking senior-waitress, or maybe she's his Dominatrix I'm not sure. She looks ready to yank him back by his nipple clips and give him a good spanking at any moment.

As a good little trainee Micah gives us the opening speech welcoming us to The MG and asks us if we've ever been there before. We say no, of course, just so he can demonstrate his full knowledge of the goods and services offered by his employer -- and please his Mistress at the same time. At the end of the speech he writes his name in crayon on the paper, however he has forgotten the crucial element of writing it upside-down. Mistress is displeased. She chastises him in front of us for his egregious error and he visibly shrinks under her glare. I can almost feel his nipples tingling in anticipation of the sweet torture that awaits him back in the kitchen.

They leave us to look over our menu and Micah returns a few minutes later with our drinks. He asks us if we're ready to order or if we need a few more minutes. Jess and I look at each other and decide that, yes, we are ready to order.

Me: "I think I know how to pronounce my own name. It was my grandmother's name. She died of lung cancer last month and I'm still dealing with it."

Micah (desperately looking around for his Mistress who has slipped out back for a smoke) "umm... ok. Can I take your order?"

Me: "Why don't you start with my friend Jess? She's a deaf mute so she's going to have to write down her order. That's ok, isn't it? I mean you ARE A.D.A. compliant, right? This isn't the 1950s, you know, when the disabled had to hide their disabilities! This is the 21st century!"